An assembly line worker at the SodaStream factory in the Occupied West Bank. / Kate Shuttleworth, for USA TODAY

by Kate Shuttleworth, Special for USA TODAY

by Kate Shuttleworth, Special for USA TODAY

MISHOR ADUMIM, West Bank - Palestinian Nabil Basharat has worked for years for Israeli-owned SodaStream, where he has risen up to shift manager in its West Bank factory.

He supports his wife and six children on an income he says is quite high by both Palestinian and Israeli standards. Though he'd like to see Palestinians get their own state someday, he doesn't want it to come at the expense of his career.

"They need to understand what the factory gives the Palestinian workers and there are a lot of factories in this area doing the same thing," says Basharat, 40, who lives in a village near Ramallah.

The "they" he alludes to are the European and American groups pushing a boycott of Israeli products to get Israel to relinquish claims to the West Bank, a region the size of Delaware on Israel's eastern border where about 375,000 Israelis and 2.1 million Palestinians live.

In the most recent development in the boycott movement, British-based charity Oxfam demanded that American actress Scarlett Johansson, a goodwill ambassador for the charity, stop appearing in ads for SodaStream, which makes machines that let you carbonate beverages at home.

She refused. Oxfam, which usually is involved in ending hunger overseas, claimed that the presence of Israeli businesses in the West Bank "further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support."

Johansson defended SodaStream, saying it promotes peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Israelis, and resigned from Oxfam.

For 17 years, SodaStream's 22 factories have garnered little attention. But they have become increasingly targeted by what is known as the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement or BDS, a long-running campaign of leftist academics and Palestinian activists to isolate Israel's economy as a means to pressure it to give up all claims to the West Bank.

The factory that the campaign has targeted is in Mishor Adumim, part of the Jewish settlement Maale Adumim that overlooks East Jerusalem. The campaign says the settlement is illegal under international law but Israel says that is false.

SodaStream was able to set up a factory in the West Bank because of Area C, the zone of Israeli-controlled land that makes up 61% of the West Bank. Palestinians are prohibited from building on much of the land, which Israel says must be divided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

A framework for such negotiations are currently taking place under the auspices of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The BDS movement and the Palestinian Authority say the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank is at the root of the failure of Palestinians to progress politically or economically.

On a visit to the factory, USA TODAY found that the movement's allegations were not on the minds of many of the plant's 1,300 workers, of which 500 are Palestinian and 450 are Arab Israelis and 350 Jewish Israelis.

Israeli Arab Zafid Abu Aballah, 28, has been a machine operator at the factory for four years.

"I have an Israeli passport, if the firm closed I could find another job, but Palestinians would not be able to, there are no jobs for Palestinians in the West Bank.

"This is political, just political but the people here just want to work and live, they don't have an interest in the politics between Palestine and Israel."

Aballah says he make $2,000 a month, significantly more than the Palestinian Authority minimum wage of $377.

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum told USA TODAY he is "fed up" with the Palestinian- Israeli conflict and says more business people should take the opportunity to contribute to peace in the way SodaStream has.

Birnbaum said a boycott had no impact on SodaStream as the growth rate of the business topped 40% last year, but that it is actually Palestinian workers who pay the price of the boycotts.

"Markets like Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway only receive products from outside this factory from the mother of human rights - China," he said.

Birnbaum believed Johansson was adequately briefed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict despite never having been to the West Bank or the SodaStream factory.

"She was aware of the attention that an affiliation with this company and factory could bring, I frankly didn't expect it to be as big a deal as it ended up being. I didn't expect Oxfam to be so superficial in its treatment of this," said Birnbaum.

When asked if he would close the factory under the political pressure, Birnbaum said:

"It would be a very difficult thing for me to throw 1,300 people into unemployment," he said. "We are a model for peace, we are showing Israelis and Palestinians that there can be peace."

"If someone were to convince me that it is the right thing to do to shut down this facility I will consider it, but at this time we're here."

Oxfam spokesman Alun McDonald said Oxfam did not disagree with Israeli-owned factories in the West Bank once a peace agreement had been reached.

"The problem at the moment is it's in an illegal settlement on occupied land. If it's an Israeli factory in a future Palestinian state, paying tax in Palestine and genuinely benefiting the economy, then it could be a good thing.

McDonald said the issue was not labor rights or conditions in the factory, nor SodaStream specifically, but about the location.

"We believe Israeli settlements in the West Bank are an obstacle to the chance of achieving a two-state solution and lasting peace and that presence and expansion of settlements is one of the main drivers of poverty in the Palestinian communities we work in.

"Any company located in settlements contributes to their viability and legitimizes them, no matter what their labor practices."